Adrian Askarieh, chief exec of Prime Universe Films has said Nintendo should take a leaf out of Marvel’s book and start making their own movies. Apparently Marvel found some success with that, or something…
Askarieh is currently working on movie versions of Deus Ex and Kane & Lynch. He seems to think it would be a mistake if Nintendo didn’t take advantage of the popularity of franchises such as Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, and that plumber bloke.
I’d make some kind of dig at the 1993 Mario movie at this point, but that’s a young man’s game. I tire of it.
Askarieh said:
The Nintendo brand transcends the platform. You can say Nintendo, and for a lot of people it still represents video games. Everyone knows Nintendo, kids, adults; it’s multi-generational. They have these wonderful properties that most of us have grown attached to. For them to not take advantage of that would be a bad idea. That was a huge risk for Marvel. But they did it and look at them now, Nintendo should to the same thing … The more iconic the characters are, the better the movies they will make.
Is Askarieh talking utter bollocks? He might well be. After all, Marvel comics have a rich history and universes of stories to draw insiration from when creating a film. Nintendo have big names, but pretty simplistic stories -putting together a feature length film about Mario (while awesome) wouldn’t be so easy.
Then again, Askarieh served as producer on the Hitman movies, and they were dogshit, so maybe Nintendo shouldn’t take his advice?
Still, he’s not the only filmmaker that wants to see Nintendo tackle the world of film. Roy Lee, producer of The Lego Movie said that a Nintendo mashup movie would be his holy grail project. The Lego Movie was not dogshit, so maybe it’s just a case of Nintendo listening to the right people.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.